It’s becoming pretty apparent that the most dominant sports program at St. Francis High doesn’t play on Friedman Field or inside the school’s gym, but, rather, can be seen on the sidelines and near the bench.
The St. Francis Sports Medicine and Athletic Training Program just completed another dominant postseason that began with the Golden Knights being awarded a second consecutive National Athletic Trainers’ Assn. (NATA) Safe Sports School award.
The accolade was followed by the school winning its fifth consecutive Alert Services National Championship, which included 12 members earning All-American honors.
“It’s been exciting to get both honors and gratifying that the program is up to the highest standard,” said St. Francis certified athletic trainer Eli Hallak, who runs the program. “The guys have put in a lot of hard work and the Alert Services Championship was a real challenge.”
The Golden Knights were informed of their NATA award in late May. St. Francis was one of 23 schools in California to take home the honor and earned first-team recognition.
According to the NATA, first-team honors are awarded to, “schools that have acted on all recommended and required elements of the Safe Sports School checklist.”
“We applied for it immediately and each award certification lasts for three years,” Hallak said. “We had a three-year stamp from 2013 that was ending in May and we were basically following all the requirements and more to be recognized on the first team. So, it was expected.”
The NATA checklist had many requirements that included educating students and parents on the benefits and risks of a specific award, providing or facilitating nutritional counseling and providing a permanent area to treat and evaluate injured athletes.
As for the Alert Service National Championships, the final scoring was announced Friday and the Golden Knights won the school’s fifth championship with a final team average of 65.33.
The Alert Division (schools whose enrollment is no higher than 999 students) average of St. Francis bested runner-up Cheney High (58.08) of Washington and Village Christian (57.37).
“This is a total team effort,” Hallak said. “It’s not easy or automatic winning this championship, but we had a committed team. It’s not just the All-Americans, but all those in the program who prepped.”
St. Francis senior Dylan Hankins took home the top spot in the division, while Casey McCreary was fourth, Charles Greeves was fifth, Patrick Dionisio was sixth and Alexi Garcia took seventh.
Other St. Francis All-Americans were Colin Keenan (tied for ninth), James Oka (11th), Nick Bass (14th), Spencer Gindraux (tied for 17th), Gabriel Tajima-Pena (tied for 17th), Marcos Friedman (tied for 17th) and Colin Triedler (tied for 21st).
The three-day National High School Sports Medicine Competition Championships took place from May 16-18 and each participating squad was allowed to have between eight and 15 students.
The competition was broken into two components.
The first part was a 300-question exam administered over two hours that consisted of topics such as first aid and CPR, emergency procedures, medical terminology, legal issues, physiology and anatomy.
There was also a 30-minute physical exam component that was graded and observed by a certified trainer.
“I’m proud of the effort from this team because every year the test gets more and more challenging,” Hallak said. “If you look at this program since it started in 1999, it’s just grown and become an athletic staple at the school.”